From late 1993 to early 1999, “The Phantom of the Opera” had a record-setting run in San Francisco, playing 2,126 performances in just over a five-year period. It’s a Broadway show run unlikely to be matched again in the Bay Area.
Now the show’s touring production is at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts through Oct. 16, as part of Broadway San Jose’s current season. In the production is someone probably familiar to those who saw the show during the 1990s run: Lisa Vroman, who played young ingenue turned opera star Christine Daaé, the recipient of the Phantom’s secret and obsessive tutelage, is now on the tour as ballet taskmaster Madame Giry.
Another cast member, one with Bay Area ties, is also making a return to the Paris Opera House after many years. Krista Wigle, who plays the role of the Wardrobe Mistress, will be quite familiar to some Bay Area theatergoers, especially those who frequented San Jose Playhouse and the many productions she did in downtown San Jose before the company’s closure. A performer and teacher who appeared in a previous production of the classic musical, Wigle considers herself fortunate to set out on the road once again with the classic musical. For Wigle, who survived breast cancer at 39-years-old, appreciation for these moments is easy to come by.
Actor and former Bay Area resident Krista Wigle is performing in the touring “Phantom of the Opera” production that’s in San Jose through Oct. 16. (Courtesy of Krista Wigle) Courtesy of Krista Wigle
After overcoming that diagnosis, “I decided to open up my talents to the world and see what could happen,” she says. “I started getting a lot more work in musical theater as I got older, but was still sometimes doing opera too.”
Now she’s enjoying one of the most impactful experiences of her career, one that combines her love of opera and musical theater.
“It’s just been an incredible blessing, the only thing you have to do is worry about your performance,” said Wigle, who is originally from Corvallis, Oregon, and now lives in San Francisco. “I know this sounds slightly diva-ish, but you have a dresser that helps you with your costumes, somebody that puts on your wigs. You have these incredible artists all around you doing that kind of thing, and it’s just like you’re kind of a cog in the wheel of this whole incredible experience.
“I appreciated it back then too, but I just feel like I appreciate this all even more now.”
Shannon Guggenheim, who worked with Wigle for many years at San Jose Playhouse as her director and a fellow performer, has her own sense of appreciation for the actor. Guggenheim, along with husband Scott, owned 3Below Theaters, where the Playhouse produced plays and musicals before closing up shop this past April after nearly a decade.
While the term “consummate professional” has become a cliché, Shannon Guggenheim says it applies perfectly to Wigle.
“She is talented, always prepared, always on time, a genuine joy to work with, and always delivers an excellent and consistent performance,” Guggenheim said. “As a fellow castmate, I was always amazed at her musical prowess. We would be in a music rehearsal and she would’ve memorized a vocal line of harmony that was taught to her at the previous gathering only to have the director ask her to take on a different line altogether, and one that was usually more complicated. She can sight read it and perform it perfectly on the spot as well as memorize complicated lyrics, not to mention in multiple languages.”
Performing in “Phantom” again years later means Wigle isn’t seeing this as any kind of last hurrah. As a performer and teacher with an expansive toolbox, Wigle is enjoying living in the moment, taking advantage of the travel the show is providing, and not thinking too far ahead.
“I think of it as being at this amazing point in my life, really appreciating where I am right now because I have some time to think about that since the tour goes for a while,” Wigle said. “Being in a show like this is basically winning the lottery in my world, so I am taking full advantage of this opportunity.”
David John Chávez is a former chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association, a 2020 O’Neill National Critics Institute fellow, and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2022-’23). @davidjchavez.bsky.social.
‘THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’
By Andrew Lloyd Webber, presented by Broadway San Jose
When: Oct. 7-16
Where: San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes with an intermission
Tickets: $91.05-$298.45; broadwaysanjose.com